I live in paradise. The radio tells me that at least. Every time I go anywhere in the old Ford, the disc jockeys, the car salesmen, the mini-golf courses, the restaurant owners, the blood drives, the marathons and half marathons, the people that talk like pirates, the liquor sellers and the hammock makers, the sweet sounding nearly English-literate foreign exchange girls from Belarus remind me with their script spoken public service announcements about walking and bicycle safety that we live in a tourism driven paradise. The drivers doing ten miles below post in front of me for half the year really nail it home. The “OBX”, as my home is called, or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is paradise to all of these trinkets pushers, tricksters and trade workers. When I was just nineteen and had just moved to town iconic oyster bars built on cocaine money and broken toilet dive bars, crooked piers with crooked pool tables were the order of the day for our teenage turnout to the life on this sandbar, after burning down the suburbs of southeastern Virginia. I moved here in 1989, and by 1995 a man that made his loot at three hundred bucks a night working one of those oyster bars had already opened his own restaurant, created that brand “OBX” which has become synonymous with my home of today, while in 1995 we were too busy smoking pot and chanting down the system to give a rat’s ass about saving anything, or opening our own mail, let alone businesses. We drank, we smoked, and we skated. We also played in bands and listened to music.
I have been unemployed for about eight months now. This hasn’t really bothered me, but it has put strains on the matters domestic. Two days ago after answering another handful of advertisements for employment I got a call back. A man called me to be a ‘cabana boy’, or at least that is the humorously derogatory term I attached to my own short summarization of this job. The man had let on very little, other than instead of simply dropping off rental furniture at vacation palaces we would instead be in the line of setting up said furniture. Chairs and umbrellas were mentioned. I was to call him and meet yesterday, but as a house was being moved down the road by my cave, traffic was awful, so after exchanging telephone calls all day I had gleaned two things from this potential employer; first, he talked to me so much that instead of entertaining formality and protocol he was fine with me just showing up tomorrow at a local convenience store for paperwork and ‘umbrella set-up training’ between two and eight p.m., and second; he was a very busy man who was in the business of several types and was very much dependent on mindless, disposable help, like many of those very cute Russian summer school kids. I like those kids, and was even into the mindlessness of this position, it’s certain low pay and bunkhouse lifestyle, but as a husband and father of two young daughters, I knew it would be no permanent solution. Nevertheless, I figured, why not give it a go? This morning one telephone call changed all of that.
Now I don’t know for sure if it is just my natural resistance to work of any type at this point or the sheer horror that lurked behind the voice and perceived intentions of the man on the phone about the cabana boy thing, but something in his tone led me down the dark and winding tunnel of my mind and it’s memory of a telemarketing job I got into around age nineteen, after answering an ad for concert promotions. I would say that yes, this is probably the sense that turned me the most to instead call the HR, or human resources department of a local company with which I had filed applications frequently and recently as well. Feeling a shaky security I was inclined to jump back in the bed after my wife and kids split the digs around 9:30 to be participants. I instead called a nice woman who I only knew by name, recorded voice and extension number. Much to my very real surprise she called me back this morning, quickly and in a timely fashion. We discussed the issue of the physical application, which she assured me she had not received. She also said that she would put me to work tomorrow if she only had the application. After a moment or so discussing skills and other details, she said that although she could probably use me elsewhere in the operation, that right now she was desperate for warehouse workers and asked if I would be interested in taking that while the other stuff shook out. To be honest, whether she had any valid intentions of ever moving me on I didn’t care, I was happy with the idea of another brainless, yet more stable job, perhaps year round, and with benefits. I assured her that by lunch time I would have that application in her hand. I went to the computer, found one, printed it up, attached a copy of my resume and references along with a photocopy of my Social Security card and Driver’s License for good measure and out the door I went, looking for the warehouse on Lake Drive, Building M.
I walked out to the Ford, popped the hood and connected the battery. I got in, started her up and reset the radio to my station. There was a Rolling Stones song playing as I looked North on Highway 12 past my mailbox and into the coming traffic, and gunning it, I started smiling and singing along with them, “you can’t…always get what you want.” Now this may be the most played Stones song ever, and arguably not in my top ten really, but for some reason it made me feel good. Maybe the fact that for twenty five years I have been repeating that old saying that “you should never just go for the money, you should do what makes you happy…” thing, and every time I found myself here before, I let the walls close in, the walls that weren’t even there. I failed the test of the life and practice of that almost paradoxical cliché. I had a near miss last week when almost being hired at a restaurant. I didn’t want the job, but my family needs money; ‘nothing else matters’ became the shorter mantra regarding daily thoughts of employment, and easier to see, on the dashboard, forget any horizon. Now when that song sang “she was practiced at the art of deception” something righteous and clearly shining blue pierced my epiphanic inner eye, I was aware of the umbrella man, and I knew why I was going where I was. Something, somehow had worked, and all I had to do was show up. As the hammers slammed on steel strings in a downward flowing and fallen drag, and the choir began to soar, I gunned her harder, and smiled along, nodding it seemed. “-But if you try some time, well you might find”, and Bang! I knew it all and nothing again. As the end faded out too soon it seemed, I almost began a frown until the Kinks brought Lola in. Okay I thought, by now I was equating every lyric and chord of what would be next as a divine message, and I was tuned in, scrutinizing humanly, ready to turn off the flow at anytime. With all that said I lost my train of thought for a moment looking for the warehouse and left the music. It was short and easy enough. I found my door. A man was looking at me when I walked away from my car. Asking if it was cool to park there a minute, I assured the dude that I would be right back, that I was just dropping off. “Well, if it’s only gonna be a minute,” he sort of groaned, “’cause I think that’s someone’s space.” I said, “Thanks man, I swear” as I stepped off, Ford still open and on. I saw the lady, there was a meeting, and I dropped off my stuff. After acknowledgements and mentions of thanks, other pleasantries were mutually and understandably forgone as I bid her good afternoon, “I am going to my house,” I blurted, a bit stuttered and dumb, as if I meant to convey that I knew I wasn’t needed immediately, or shortly, but not really. I got back in the car. Comfortably Numb was playing, Pink Floyd, if you don’t know. I slid past the sandy colored stubble of surfer kids bending metals and machinists and machine drivers and workers in the street on my way to the big road, before I turned left to go home, and to that guitar solo. I shut up and went left as I needed to while the song made me understand the security I just bartered for, what I was giving, and what it meant to be nearing summer here, and my seasonably employed structure remaining motionless really. That is how I thought as I drove past three of them; probably from Bulgaria…two regulars, quirky, and then the post-always, grey third wearing her skull print hose and skin tight hot pink fake leather mini-dress. Nineteen and eighty seven was showing as I just drove on past, the hot road’s focus.
As I inched towards home, in and out of the sluggish guests Bob Segar came on the box; Against The Wind, “aww shit, I thought” even though I liked it when I was young and had it in a very small collection of forty fives including The One That You Love from Air Supply and Coming To America by Neil Diamond. To be fair I had Convoy as well, from the movie, I am too lazy to remember the artist right now. The chorus sounds like a Glee Club now, but I thought it was pretty tough back then. Funny, after all of this cleared my mind he sang the line “breaking all of the rules that would bend”, or at least if that isn’t what the song says, it damned well should, because I had the reason now for that song in the mix. Just about the time I climbed down from my musical high horse The Cars brought about the reprise of my smile and a volume hike. My Best Friends Girlfriend started in slowly with that early eighties reggae muffled delayed pick and electric hands clapping. “She always dances down the street with her suede blue eyes…” Cars got out of my way of their own volition, the road opened on that home stretch and nearing my house doing around ten to fifteen above the limit I vowed to get home with the set completed there, in that perfect sonic moment. I drove now on the incoming half of our two-lane road, a hundred yards from my house, landing gear down and air brakes applied, finger on the stereo button in case something horrible came on, like Jimmy Buffett or a Toyota commercial. Fittingly, as I slid in home, Creedence came in with Have You Ever Seen the Rain? I felt thankful for my two new shoes up front and my ability to hold the road now as I sat there, feeling the boil of the old neglected radiator. I smelled the brakes as I sang the first two verses, just being there, me in the Ford. At least the radio in that old heap hasn’t gone out on me. I love my music. I love the music for the people it reminds me of; I love it for those places. I shut her off halfway through, before the second chorus, plenty of song to go, but I wanted to tell all of you about this. I drove around blind with a purpose. I found my turns and my way was clear, and the music was beside me, and not only singing to me, but making me understand the whole time, what I cannot understand; why I can never understand. Oh, and Convoy is what would be referred to as a ‘novelty song’ from 1975. It was the title of a movie and soundtrack sung by C.W. McCall. C.W. McCall is a pseudonym of Bill Fries. I never knew the man or the legend, but I saw the movie and I had that forty five. I mentioned it earlier, I was just reminding you. I was a kid back then too, in 1975.
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